Columbia Theatre

The Detroit-Columbia Central Office Building, commissioned by the Michigan Bell Telephone Company in 1927, is an architecturally significant telephone office building designed in the Art Deco style. The building was designed by one of Detroit's most prominent architectural and engineering firms, Smith, Hinchman & Grylls (SH&G). This firm was the leading architect in telephone building design for the Michigan Bell Telephone Company. The firm has designed telephone office and exchange buildings in over seventy Michigan cities, beginning as early as 1904. SH&G earned the majority of their commissions from the telephone company during the 1920s and 1940s. Today, SH&G is the third largest and the oldest continuous-practice architecture, engineering and planning firm in the United States. The Michigan Bell Telephone Company was created on January 10, 1881. Prior to this, the Telephone and Telegraph Construction Company was incorporated in 1877, becoming Michigan's first telephone company. The national Bell Telephone Company, named after the inventor of the telephone -Alexander Graham Bell - granted this Michigan company a license to build and operate exchanges. At that time, exchanges served the territory within a fifteen mile radius of a central office. As the need arose to link the various exchanges in the state, the Michigan Bell Telephone Company was created. Within the following few years, this company combined with the Telephone and Telegraph Construction Company to become the Michigan Telephone Company. The business was later known as the Home Telephone Company and next as the Michigan State Telephone Company, officially becoming Michigan Bell Telephone Company in 1924. The company's renaming was a symbolic event and publicly indicated the company's close association with the other Bell System companies in the nation. All competing telephone companies throughout the state were a part of the Michigan Bell system by 1950. The Michigan Bell Telephone Company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Ameritech Corporation on January 1, 1984. Michigan Bell was renamed Ameritech Michigan in September 1993. The Detroit-Columbia Central Office Building is still owned and operated by Ameritech Michigan. The Michigan Bell Telephone Company commissioned the architectural and engineering firm of SH&G to design the office and exchange building on Selden, in Detroit. Ground was broken for the $1.2 million Detroit-Columbia Central Office Building in July 1927. Construction of the three story, Art Deco building was completed in November 1928. The Detroit-Columbia Central Office Building was the eighth panel dial system office placed in service in Detroit and incorporated the latest mechanical design. The "dial system" office building originally served the seven thousand telephone users in central Woodward Avenue district of the city. Prior to the dial system office, the area was served by lines from the Glendale, Northway, Empire and Melrose manual offices. The Detroit-Columbia Office Building was constructed to relieve those manual office, however it did not replace their function. The above mentioned manual offices, and the Detroit-Columiba Office Building, are all named after streets in Detroit. Although the origin of the name could not be verified, Columbia, a street located in downtown Detroit, was most likely an indication of the exchange building's territory. SH&G was chosen by the Michigan Bell Telephone Company to design their telephone office buildings and exchanges because the firm offered comprehensive design services. Both engineering and architectural professions were represented within the firm, a rarity at the turn of the century, as SH&G recognized the need for collaboration between architects and engineers to serve the needs of expanding industry and to take advantage of the growing architectural and engineering opportunities. The conversion work in electrical and mechanical building systems increasingly required the collaboration of an architect and all new buildings designed by architects had to include substantial design contributions by trained engineers. SH&G was incorporated in 1903 as Field, Hinchman & Smith (FHS) by Henry G. Field, Theodore H. Hinchman, and Fred L. Smith. The company was a merger of two businesses; the engineering practice of Field and Hinchman and the architectural practice of Smith. Field and Hinchman opened their engineering consulting business in Detroit in 1894, specializing in the conversion from gas to electricity of existing buildings, both public and private. They also planned and installed business and residential telephone facilities for a host of small telephone companies. Field and Hinchman met in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan and graduated in 1892 and 1893 respectively. Smith, a third generation architect, began practicing architecture, as a draftsman, at the age of seventeen in the office of his father, Mortimer Smith. He became a partner in the firm, renamed Mortimer Smith & Son, at twenty-one. F. Smith began his own practice after his fathers death in 1896. The two businesses merged and incorporated in 1903. Field was the president; Smith the vice-president and Hinchman the treasurer. Ralph Collamore, another graduate of the University of Michigan who was a draftsman for Field and Hinchman, became the secretary of the firm. At the time of incorporation, various divisions within the company were created and included: architectural, structural engineering, heating and ventilating, lighting, power transmission, water supply, factory equipment, property appraisal, and a test laboratory. FH&S became well known for their commercial and industrial work, receiving commissions from the Michigan State Telephone Company and Detroit Edison. In 1906, Field resigned from the firm to try his fortunes in the growing automotive industry. At the same time, the firm was looking to expand further into residential work. H.J. Maxwell Grylls, an architect with a reputation for his residential work, joined the firm that year. In the reorganization, Smith became president, Grylls became vice-president, and Hinchman and Collamore remained in their positions as treasurer and secretary. At this time, Grylls had a number of residential commissions underway, two of which were located in the Detroit neighborhood of Indian Village. Over time, SH&G designed or altered more than thirty residences in Indian Village as well as a number of residences in Detroit's Boston-Edison neighborhood. The telephone utility industry played an important role in the success of SH&G. Their first commission was from the Home Telephone Company in 1904 for the Main City Exchange on the corner of John R and Madison. SH&G's early experience with electricity and telephones and their architectural expertise made them the best candidate for the job. SH&G's relationship with this firm, which became the Michigan Bell Telephone Company in 1924, continues today. The firm is responsible for designing office and exchange buildings for the telephone company in over seventy cities throughout Michigan including Detroit, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Lansing, Flint, Ann Arbor, Traverse City, and Petosky to name a few. SH&G received most of their commissions from the telephone company during the 1920s and 1940s. The firm also completed studies for small buildings for automatic exchanges, designed repeater stations, and worked on microwave tower installations throughout Michigan for Michigan Bell. Some of the firm's other notable, early commissions in Detroit include: Waterworks Park on East Jefferson (1903), the Women's Exchange Building (1916), the Kern Building (1917), the Bankers Trust Building (1925), the Buhl Building (1925), rebuilding of the Country Club of Detroit (1925), the Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church (1925), the Penobscot Building (1928), Fyfe's Shoe Store (1929), and the Union Trust (Guardian) Building (1929).

The Detroit-Columbia Central Office Building, located at 52 Selden in Detroit, Michigan is a large, nearly square, three story building with slightly narrower frontage along Selden. The brick and limestone building features steel and reinforced concrete construction. The smooth facade, Art Deco in style, features pilasters, round arch and square head windows, and stylized ornament. The reinforced concrete and steel framed Central Office building measures 105' wide by 116' deep by 64' tall. The three story building, with full basement, is faced in smooth limestone on the first floor and light brown brick above. Limestone pilasters rising from the ground floor to the top of the building divide the facade into six bays; the tops of the pilasters step in and bear stylized ornamentation. The entrance is on the eastern bay of the front facade. A panel with carved ornament, including filagre surrounding a bell, acts as a stylized keystone above the entrance. This panel is also placed over the slightly recessed, rectangular opening in the west bay. The first floor of the central four bays contain semi-round arched openings containing subdivided windows and aprons. At second and third story levels are two story rectangular openings containing one grouping of windows per floor per bay divided by ornamental metal spandrels. The exceptions are the eastern and western bay, which each have a rectangular window opening per floor; this arrangement continues around to the brick side walls for two bays until the composition becomes more utilitarian. At the time of construction, the interior of the building contained equipment and offices. The basement contained a cable vault, a battery room and the heating plant. The first and second floors contained the switching equipment and terminal frames. The third floor contained the operating rooms and quarters. The interior of the building has been altered over time to accommodate new equipment and modernized facilities.